Date of Award
Fall 2017
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Psychology
Program
Clinical Psychology
First Advisor
Torres, Lucas
Second Advisor
De St. Aubin, Ed
Third Advisor
Hoelzle, James
Abstract
The current study was an exploratory investigation of the cultural constructs of biculturalism and bilingualism as predictors of executive function among a community-based sample of 25 older adult Latinos living in the U.S. The potential moderating effects of education and bicultural identity integration were also examined. Using regression analyses, biculturalism and bilingualism were examined independently as predictors of performance on three separate tasks of executive function: trail making tests, a phonemic fluency task, and a clock drawing task. Bilingualism was not found to predict performance on any of the executive functioning tasks. In the overall sample, biculturalism also was not found to predict performance on tasks of executive function. Additional analyses; however, revealed that among women in the sample, biculturalism was predictive of better performance on a phonemic fluency task, specifically among those who were high in cultural harmony, an aspect of bicultural identity integration. Also noteworthy was the finding that biculturalism was actually related to worse phonemic fluency performance among non U.S. educated individuals, contrary to stated hypotheses. Findings are discussed within the framework of cognitive reserve theory. This is the first study to examine biculturalism as a potential predictor of executive functioning and the first to suggest that biculturalism may contribute to cognitive reserve. The study highlights the complexities of examining cultural variables in cognition research, as well as the need for future work in this area.